I’m a retired English teacher (high school and college) with 53 years of marriage, two children, four grandchildren, one dog. I’ve had poems in Poetry, The American Scholar, The Tennessee Review, Yankee, and others!

What We See

For an exercise in writing class, the teacher asked two friends to come, then stage a fight, working up from slights to fisticuffs and rage.

The students, taking it as real, sat numb, until one man pushed the other from the room.

The startled class was told to write down all they’d heard and seen. Their writings werevague shadow shows on a screen.

I once read a poem to my sister and brother – a biting poem about our father. “That’s not the man I knew!”my sister sobbed. “That’s him,all right,” my brother grinned.

I’m at a loss with vegetable aggression. Faint-hearted, I will watch this progression, learn to eat a sweet potato pie, give many yams away. Winter will kill the garden anyway, and I will turn to poetry, coward that I am.

Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please write to the author (email address above) and tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF